The meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), which was to discuss coal price pass-through mechanism on Friday, has been postponed. “The meeting of the CCEA on coal price pass-through mechanism, which was scheduled for tomorrow, has been postponed,” a coal ministry official said.
No fresh date for the meeting has been fixed as of now, the official added. Under the proposed pass-through mechanism, the entire additional cost of imports would be passed on to the consumers as against the averaging of prices of imported and domestic coal under the earlier planned price-pooling mechanism.
The government had buried a proposal to pool prices of imported and domestic coal to make the fuel affordable to new power plants, owing to sharp opposition to the scheme. A note to the CCEA on the mechanism has been submitted, but the final call will be taken by the Cabinet, said sources.
The government is mulling import of the fuel as Coal India Ltd (CIL) will supply 65 per cent of the requirement from domestic sources and another 15 per cent can be provided from overseas market. Power minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had said on May 29 that pass-through mechanism for supply of coal was ready and “hopefully in a week or 10 days we should be ready to take it to the CCEA”.
-Sourced
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